Honk my hooter, look at what happened last night on the ride home from work.

Twilight comes late enough to feel like summer, but the waning daylight is evident, and it’s dark when we put the kids to bed. The transition from summer to fall, however, hasn’t been so much a cross-fade as a knife-switch. It took a while for summer’s dog days to arrive, finally coming in August, but in the span of the last 3 days, it’s gone from sleeping-on-top-of-the-sheets hot to it’s-a-great-day-for-football mild. I half expected to come outside this morning, watch every leaf on our street turn red in thirty seconds, and crash to the sidewalk all at once.

This year’s three-month bivouac at the pool is winding down, and once again the last days inspire both panic and relief. The pool itself is a delight, but it’s the grounds and the community that keep us in its orbit all summer long. We let the kids off leash to run with their toddler cohort, cook on community grills while our kitchen remains cool and un-thrashed, get to enjoy a beer (and sometimes more than one), and mingle with our friends in a pleasant meadow. We don’t even have to arrange to meet anyone. I mean, where else are they gonna go?

On the other hand, it tends to dominate the season. In early June, The missus was frantically trying to get the kids and I out the door. I hesitated, looked back, expressed my need to do something about our unfit-for-habitation living room and said I’d meet them later. “What are you talking about?” she said in disbelief, “The pool’s open! We’ll clean in September! Let’s go!” So, in that sense, we’re looking forward to blowing the dust of our project list and seeing what else there is to do.

One big project did get off the ground, though. The Wife’s other gig has been kick-ass this season. We’ve been blessed with berries and peaches and bread and all sorts of delicious local produce. She also came into this season hell-bent to realize a vision, a bike clinic, staffed with volunteers, who’d teach people about bike maintainence, do some repairs, and generally encourage people to get their bikes on the road. I have to admit, I was skeptical that it could work (and leary of being sucked into it since I already take over the kids on Saturday mornings while she’s market-managing). But lo and behold, smart, motivated people jumped right in, got folks signed up, and the results have been stunning. I worked one Saturday with 2-4 other volunteers, and didn’t stop from the opening bell until an hour after market closed. We’d helped over 30 people tune their bikes, and several of those folks have turned around and become volunteers since then. Meanwhile, some enterprising yoots down ’round the Bloomingdale Farmers’ Market have started up their own bike clinic, which we stopped by on Sunday morning, and it was totally hoppin’.

I gotta say, I’d be proud just to know my wife if I wasn’t lucky enough to be married to her.

Cledus and I had an incredible summer together, logging over 1700 miles and climbing almost 60,000 feet since Memorial Day, bringing my totals for the first two-thirds of the year to over 3100 miles and over 100,000 feet of climbing. Our many miles together culminated in my first ever century, which was far and away the baddest-ass thing I’ve done this year, and raising money and riding for Team Fatty made it even more meaningful. I’ll likely do more centuries, but I’ll always regard that one with a special fondness.

So into fall we go. With school starting, children to transport, backpacks to haul, and layers to carry, the swift-strike of a commute I make on Cledus will be replaced most mornings with the happy rolling melody of Nigel’s fat, creamy tires chewing up bricks, asphalt, and gravel with gusto. To tell you the truth, it’s hard to be sad about the transition when they both put such a big grin on my face. And while I’ve certainly enjoyed racking up road miles, the completion of the big ride and the crisp shift in seasons will mark a return to a more balanced palette of adventures. I’m itchy to throw plastic at metal, which I mostly gave up for training, and longtail camping trips up the C&O are definitely in order now that mosquitoes are no longer part of the experience and there’s enough snap in the air to make the first cup of coffee extra awesome.

Speaking of longtail projects, we’ve convinced more of our friends to take the plunge! They asked what it would take to make it happen, I pointed them towards a beautiful mid-90’s Trek 930 being sold nearby, they wisely jumped on it and pulled the trigger on an Xtracycle kit. And, get this, I’ve got the green light to make an appointment with the powder coater to make the whole rig Taxicab Yellow. (I’m trying to track down checkerboard decals, too, let me know if you’ve got a line on ‘em.) It’s going to be beautiful, and hopefully we’ll get it on the road quickly so we can get them out on the trail sooner than later. They’re excited. I’m excited for ‘em.

All this makes it sounds as if I’m done with road miles. Not so! In fact, another transition is in store as we ride into autumn. I had to face the fact that it’s just not the time or place for me to own a kick-ass single-speed mountain bike. I don’t ride singletrack here, as much as I think I’d like to, so the 4one5 has been relegated to the occasional urban assault, which consists mostly of delighting myself with bunny hops off speed bumps and tearing up the neighbors’ lawns. It needs to be on real trails, wearing knobbies, eating dirt. Meanwhile, I’ve developed an itch for a real road bike. Nothing too fancy, mind ya, but something a little more lithe and a little less linebacker than the Cledus. We’ll have to see what happens.

There’s one more big sunny barbecue left before it’s time to get the long sleeves and hoodies out (or, in the case of my San Francisco brethren, to put them back and get ready for things to warm up). And then it’s harvest and costumes and turkeys and reindeer from there on out.

So whatcha got planned for the end of summer?

Bikegame update: so far 2009 is lookin’ like 58 rides for 418 miles, and this morning I knocked off Level 2 with an early morning ride out to College Park and back. Despite the 25-35 mph winds I hit coming home, it was awesome. I’m trying to think of this little run of days in the 50’s and 60’s as a wonderful gift instead of an excruciating tease, we’ll see how I feel about it Saturday when it heads back into the high 30’s.

Also, the Nitto Noodle bars I put on Cledus are far and away the most comfortable drop bars I’ve ever laid hands upon. Until I’ve established a gear review category, I’ll just have to highly recommend them. I do.

This morning after dropping Ruby off at school, I was driving Nigel through Catholic University and headed for my regular commute when I decided to take a big, long way around instead.

Rather than take the direct northeast-to-southwest route, I cut west all the way to Mt. Pleasant and dropped into Rock Creek Park, where I offered a pump to a fellow commuter who was struggling on squishy, flattish tires. I continued down to the National Mall and rode along the reflecting pool, which is lined on both sides, the full length of it, with porta-potties. Evidently there’s a biggish event happening there soon, and they expect a lot of bathroom usage, perhaps it’s for a huge chili cookoff? Finally, I did a lap around the Washington Monument and headed to work.

None of this is remarkable, mind you, but it was about 30 degrees and gray, so it wasn’t that it was unseasonably warm and pretty and I just didn’t want to go inside. I was riding Nigel, so it wasn’t that I was in a zippy groove and didn’t want to stop racing. And it wasn’t that Washington Hospital Center was so stunningly beautiful that I was drawn to its charm. No, I suddenly decided to double my inbound commute because I wanted the miles, and the climbing feet, because I wanted the points, because I want to level up.

There’s still a ton of little things left to build and fix on it, but there’s enough there now to make me want to see those points add up and that level click over. If you want to play, or just poke around, feel free to join in.

Incidentally, the extra miles were pleasant all on their own, after all riding Nigel’s a good time and I would have enjoyed them whether or not I was scoring them. But that initial nudge at the corner of Michigan and Irving, where I chose the long ramble over the short commute, that came from my hunger for points and my desire to level up. It seems like BiKE GAME! is tingling, and that means it’s working. Pretty cool!

On Thursday, we were supposed to pack up and head to New York for some overdue visits and foodering. But Huck was uncharacteristically lethargic and threw up a few times in the morning, so we decided to hold off a day and cuddle the boy. After all, I’d taken Friday off, we still had a 3 day weekend and we were all packed. So we chilled.

Friday morning we were on the road shortly after 7 a.m. and headed north on 95. We were about 20 minutes north of Baltimore when Huck threw up for the fourth time. It was clear he wasn’t ready for this, we couldn’t justify bringing plague-baby into our friends’ homes, and then it occurred to us that we might be next, and we didn’t want to be visiting 5 hours from home if that happened, so we headed back.

Saturday morning I threw up. Rebbie tried, but didn’t. Both of us came down with it, Huck still had it. Ruby was the only person in the family not dragging their pathetic carcass around the house feeling like death, so she got a full free pass on as many movies as she wanted to watch. She kept asking us if we felt better, asking if we could go to Nyark City tomorrow. She took it pretty well when we explained that the weekend was shot, and we promised to take another shot at it soon. She’s a trooper.

Yesterday, we all felt a lot better, so we piled onto the longtails and headed down to the Dupont Farmers’ Market, then stopped by Big Bear Cafe on the way home, a little over 10 miles, which extrapolates to about 912 miles for the year.

We better pick up the pace.